About the festival
Since 2003, Rhythm & Vines Festival has been held annually at Waiohika Estate in Gisborne, New Zealand. After beginning as a one-day festival held on New Year’s Eve, in 2008 R&V expanded to the three days covering 29-31 December.
Across the last 15 years, R&V has grown from a 1,800-person party to a three-day 30,000-person festival, before being scaled back to its current 20,000 capacity.
With 15,000 attendees camping onsite, R&V allows campers to leave the festival grounds and drive into town – boosting local businesses and injecting millions into the Gisborne economy across the lifetime of the festival, making it very popular with locals.
Their 2018 headliners included Flight Facilities, Duke Dumont, Juice WRLD, Tchami x MALAA, Vince Staples, and Wilkinson.
Case study: The success of Universe and Rhythm & Vines in 2019
Rhythm & Vines Festival became part of the Live Nation family in 2018. The festival’s team selected Universe as their ticketing platform of choice for 2019 because of its self-service functionality, ease-of-use, and powerful ticketing & scaling capabilities.
With over 30,000 punters signing up for pre-sale access through partner Audience Republic, 2019 saw a record pre-sale for Rhythm & Vines Festival. Universe’s web integration allowed for registrations to take place directly at the festival’s website with no redirect.
80% of R&V tickets sell before the lineup is even announced. With a variety of ticketing options available including single- and multi-day admission, multiple campsite options, premium upgrades, shuttles, up-sells, donations, and more, Universe allows the R&V team to easily manage their complex ticketing set-up.
